John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. That is only the beginning of the problems with this resolution. It also requires that if any evidence of illegality is discovered in the 1996 campaign activities of a Member of Congress by a Member of Congress, then such evidence is to be referred to the Ethics Committee. Does that mean the committee's investigation is to be terminated at that point? And, if the evidence comes to the attention of the committee before an investigation has even been initiated, does that mean the committee is to defer to the Ethics Committee for the investigation of the Member? Does referral to the Ethics Committee mean that Governmental Affairs will defer to the Ethics Committee on any possible criminal referral to the Department of Justice? We need answers to all of those things, obviously. What if we are into an investigation and there is something that pops up that looks as though it might be an ethical matter and might be illegal, which this committee would be permitted to deal with? Since there is this special provision with regard to ethics in the Senate, in referring it to the Ethics Committee, do we have to stop any investigation before anything comes out beyond a point where there has been just an allegation of illegality? So, let me return to the question of the meaning of the word ``illegal'' in the resolution. What is the standard to be used by the Governmental Affairs Committee to determine that an activity involves an illegality and is therefore subject to an investigation? Is illegality meant to be equivalent to criminality? Or is it broader and includes activities that are in violation of law but subject to only civil penalties or no penalties at all? The answer to this question will determine whether the activities of tax-exempt organizations engaged in political activity will be investigated. I believe the questions I am raising need to be answered during this debate so Members will know precisely what they are voting on when the time comes. These questions also need to be answered in order to examine whether the 54 subpoenas issued thus far by the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee are within the new scope of the investigation. Let me turn to some other deficiencies in the resolution. These are also deficiencies of omission. My remarks stem once again from my belief that a balanced investigation of fundraising by both parties, highlighting legal transgressions as well as their legal but ethically dubious fundraising activities, could be effective in pointing the way toward real reform. Conversely, an unbalanced, partisan investigation suggesting that the problems lie solely or even mainly with one party would be destructive to forging a consensus and would lead to political games, possibly including an attempt to pass reform legislation crafted not so much to fix the system as to give one party a fundraising advantage over the other. As the ranking Democrat on Governmental Affairs, I have urged the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee to follow standard Senate practices and enter into a written agreement that the investigation will be carried out in a bipartisan manner with an agreed-upon agenda and with fairness. That involves ensuring that both the majority and minority: have contemporaneous access to all documentary evidence received by the committee; have the right to be given adequate advance notice of, to be present at, and to participate equally in all depositions and investigatory interviews; have equal opportunity to obtain and present relevant evidence on the subjects of the committee's inquiry; and, are treated equally and without discrimination in the discharge of the committee's administrative responsibilities. I regret to say that no agreement on these matters has been reached thus far. This has most egregiously shown up in the way subpoenas have been handled thus far. I am hopeful that passage of a funding resolution for the committee's investigation will be the occasion to put this investigation back on a bipartisan track. I believe that failure to do so will redound to the credit of no one and mark the first major stain on this committee's record of bipartisan cooperation during my 22-year tenure on it. Finally, I must comment on that part of the resolution that provides for authorization of some $450,000 in additional funds for the Rules Committee to examine those aspects of campaign fundraising that are outside the scope of the Governmental Affairs Committee's investigation under the terms of this resolution as currently written. It is certainly true that the Rules Committee has legislative jurisdiction over campaign finance reform and, therefore, can look into soft money and independent expenditures, among other things, as policy matters. But the Rules Committee is not basically an investigative committee. I could not recall the last time it ever issued a subpoena. We made some inquiry into this and found that no subpoenas have been issued by the committee since at least 1980. We do not know whether any were before that time or not. They may do hearings, but that is not the same as an investigation as conceived under this resolution. Let us not deceive the public about this. Recent press reports clearly indicated that at least two members of the Rules Committee, Republican members of the Rules Committee, would not vote for the funding resolution for the investigation that originally came out of the Governmental Affairs Committee because the scope of the investigation would have included legal as well as illegal congressional fundraising practices. Those Members were concerned that the result of such an investigation might be to raise public pressure on Congress to pass campaign finance reform legislation. The fact is, there is little support for campaign reform among my Republican colleagues. The McCain-Feingold bill has only one other Republican cosponsor, and that is Senator Thompson, to his credit. So we know what game is being played with the Rules Committee rewrite of the previously-agreed-to scope of the Governmental Affairs Committee's investigation. It is a game in which legal but improper congressional fundraising is kept off the table while a parade of Presidential fundraisers for the Democratic Party and the Clinton-Gore campaign are brought before the cameras at televised hearings, to give the impression that all the problems are with the Democratic Party and there is no need to change the laws. I do not believe it will work. I do not believe the American people are that naive. I believe they will see through such a strategy were it to unfold. Chairman Thompson has said congressional fundraising should be on the table. I agree with him. That is one of the reasons I was disappointed when none of his first 65 subpoenas were directed toward congressional fundraising. I and my Democratic colleagues will attempt to broaden the scope to include legal activities that are improper, which is where many of the major campaign finance problems are, and which should be thoroughly investigated by the Governmental Affairs Committee. So, I hope--in fact I invite Chairman Thompson to join me in cosponsoring an amendment I plan to offer to broaden the scope, and I invite him to join me in voting against tabling any such amendment. I also invite all Members of the Senate, Democratic and Republican, who truly want to change our system to join us. Let us look at it from your children's perspective of 20 years from now. Whichever party is in the majority--and that may have changed in that time, maybe before that--but look at your children as adults out there, taking part in the political system at that time. Whichever party is in the majority at that time, I am sure we can all hope that political fundraising will not be the mess that it is today. One way to gain that end is to assure that investigations are carried out now without fear or favor and spotlighting the dark corners, whether illegal or legal, but in either event, wrong, improper, and unethical. The resolution before us does not take us in that direction, and that is why I also urge Senator Thompson, even if we fail to pass such an amendment, to seek every opportunity at our committee level to examine and thoroughly investigate any alleged illegal fundraising activities by Members of Congress, in the House or Senate. That will at least be a start, and I pledge my full support to such efforts. So I await with interest his proposed agenda and subpoenas in this area. At the appropriate time today, before we finish this debate, I will have an amendment to submit. I would like to lay it down this evening. I doubt all the people on either side of the aisle who wish to speak on the amendment will return before we go out of session, but I would like to have time later on to submit the amendment before we go out of session this evening. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Mar. 9, 1997] For Their Targets, Mystery Groups' Ads Hit Like Attacks From Nowhere (By Charles R. Babcock and Ruth Marcus) Campaign watchdog groups and government regulators are concerned about the emergence of mysterious organizations that funded a flurry of attack ads at the end the 1996 election and could play an even larger role in coming campaigns. The groups, with bland names such as Citizens for Reform and the Republic Education Fund, spent millions of dollars on television advertising, mailings and telephone banks in the closing weeks of the campaign, mostly on the side of the Republicans. None of their activities was reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). ``The public has no idea who these people are or where they're coming from or who funds them,'' said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, which monitors political ethics. ``They are trying to influence the political process and the public is in the dark.'' For example, a group called the Coalition for Our Children's Future spent more than $700,000 on television and radio ads, mailings, and telephone banks to bolster GOP candidates in key races from Louisiana to California. The last-minute onslaught, financed in part by a donor who demanded a written confidentiality agreement, was conducted without the knowledge or approval of the group's directors. Two of the directors resigned in protest after The Washington Post informed them of the late ads, saying they never approved the expenditures. They said they still do not know exactly what was done or the source of funding. Former director Deborah Steelman, a GOP lobbyist, said she thought the group had been inactive since spending more than $4 million on advertising backing the GOP's legislative agenda in 1995. ``Clearly, the organization created another mission of which we were not a part,'' she said. Like the more identifiable AFL-CIO and environmental groups that also ran advertising, leaders of organizations such as the coalition say their television commercials were not political because they did not explicitly endorse a candidate. Since they were engaging in ``issue advocacy,'' they said, they were not required to report to the FEC the source of their funds or how much they spent. One group created last spring and calling itself Citizens for Reform spent $2 million in the closing days, according to its president, conservative activist Peter Flaherty. In California, it sent mailings into the district of Democratic Rep. George Brown accusing him of being sexist and anti- consumer. The Consumer Federation of America, cited as the source in one flier although it endorsed Brown, denounced the mailing as ``extremely misleading and grossly unfair.'' In Montana, the group bought television time calling Democratic congressional candidate Bill Yellowtail a convicted criminal who ``preaches family values . . . but took a swing at his wife.'' Another new group called Citizens for the Republic Educaiton Fund obtained at least $1 million in late ads, according to director Lyn Nofziger, longtime political aide to Ronald Reagan. In Texas, it bought television ads against Democratic congressional candidate Nick Lampson that said he had been accused of Medicare fraud. In Erie, Pa., another television ad denounced ``big labor bosses'' for trying to buy ``a Congress they can control.'' Some ads were so inflammatory that the Republican candidates they were designed to help denounced them. And some stations would not run some ads or pulled them off the air after complaints by Democratic candidates. Leaders of the groups targeting Democrats say they operated independently and they and GOP officials said the groups were not fronts for the party. Nofziger called it, ``outrageous'' that advocacy groups like his are allowed to ``go and run political ads and call them education.'' He added, ``We wouldn't have had to do it if it had not been for labor'' and its attacks on GOP candidates. The Flaherty and Nofziger groups were run by a Washington- based firm, Triad Management, that advertises itself as sort of an underground version of the Republican Party. A Triad marketing video includes testimonials from Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and several House members aimed at recruiting donors for what the video labels a ``privatized Republican national coalition.'' Triad's Carolyn Malenick, a former fund-raiser for Oliver L. North, says on the video that labor has always been the ``rapid fire'' of the Democratic Party. ``If the Republican Party needs that quote `rapid fire' where're we going to find it?'' she said. ``If we need to move or have $100,000 put into a congressional race tomorrow where're we going to find it?'' Malenick declined to be interviewed. Mark Braden, Triad's attorney, said the group was not a front for the GOP or a particular special interest, like the tobacco industry. Malenick's donors are mostly individuals from ``ideologically driven networks,'' he said. While most of the late negative issue ads with mysterious sponsors targeted Democratic races, a labor-funded group, the '96 Project, paid for voter guides mailed in the name of other groups in 14 races. The project paid $50,000 for mailings in six House districts where the fliers said they were ``sponsored'' by local or state affiliates of the National Council of Senior Citizens, a group made up predominantly of retired union members. There was no mention of the '96 Project in the mailings. Scott Wolf, director of the project, said there was no intent to deceive the public on who was behind the mailings, which made GOP candidates look unfavorable on key issues. His group also paid for mailings in eight races ``sponsored'' by the Interfaith Alliance, a group of ministers formed as an alternative to the Christian Coalition, according to the alliance's Greg Lebel. Lebel said ``it never occurred to us'' voters might be misled because the eight mailings said only that the '96 Project ``prepared'' the voter guides. Most of the late money from obscure groups was spent on television. And Federal Communications Commission officials who monitor political advertising say their authority over broadcasters is limited. Charles Kelley, chief of enforcement for the FCC's mass media bureau, said the agency wants to know ``who is the attempted persuader'' in such ads. The question, he said, is ``what legal authority we have, if any, to obligate the true sponsor to step forward.'' The FCC managed to do that in a case in Oregon last fall, when it discovered that a group calling itself Fairness Matters to Oregonians was being financed by the Tobacco Institute. The FCC ruled the group's ads, which opposed an increase in the state cigarette tax, could be aired but the tobacco Institute had to be identified as the sponsor. Various campaign reform proposals in Congress attempt to address the late attacks by saying the name or image of candidates cannot be mentioned in ads in the last 60 days before the general election. But many lawmakers and interest groups say such proposals would put unconstitutional limits on their First Amendment rights. Flaherty, who also heads the Conservative Campaign Fund PAC, said concerns about sponsorship are misplaced. ``Most people when they see an ad don't focus on who put it on, but focus on the message,'' he said. ``If the message has strength and credibility it will persuade people. If it doesn't, it won't.'' In applying for tax-exempt status, which allowed it to avoid paying taxes on investment income, Citizens for Reform told the IRS it had no plans to spend money ``attempting to influence'' elections. But asked whether the groups' advertising had been effective, Flaherty said, ``I think we made a big difference. It was an absolute onslaught in some of these areas by labor and liberal groups and I think we helped stanch the bleeding artery.'' Perhaps the most peculiar of the late ad campaigns was the one run in the name of the Coalition for our Children's Future, which spent money in six House districts, the Louisiana Senate race and 12 Minnesota legislative races, according to Executive Director Barry Bennett. Two directors, Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and Donald L. Fierce, a GOP consultant and former Republican National Committee aide, resigned in protest; two others, Steelman and Gary Andres, had left the board earlier. How the unauthorized advertising campaign was launched and how races were targeted remains murky. Bennett, working in Ohio at the time of the election as chief of staff to then- Rep. Frank A. Cremeans (R), at first said he did not know of any extensive late advertising. Then he acknowledged he had signed the secrecy agreement with the donor and signed blank checks to pay a Houston political consultant who ran the advertising campaign. Bennett said he did so without telling board members. Bennett and the group's fund-raising consultant, John Simms, said the consultant, Denis Calabrese, approached them last summer and helped connect them with some donors, who they declined to identify. Calabrese, who has worked on industry's side to make it harder to win large damage awards in lawsuits, did not return numerous phone calls. Bennett said he had tried without success, after the Post inquiries, to obtain copies of the television scripts from Simms' firm. He said he had no idea what the coalition, organized to address federal issues, was doing in Minnesota statehouse races. ``Am I embarrassed by this?'' Bennett said before he stopped returning phone calls. ``Yes . . . I understand we've created a huge mystery here and that's our fault.'' Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise not for a lengthy statement here, but just to say that most of the remarks on the other side of the aisle this afternoon have been involved with ``The China Link,'' as it is called on the diagram I see on the other side right now, and with the China connection, with Mr. Huang, Mr. Chung, Mr. Trie, and what may have happened. I am not quite sure what relevance all these things have to do with S. 39 that is before us on the floor now and which we are debating. Because everyone is agreed, everyone I know on the Rules Committee, the Governmental Affairs Committee, the White House, the President, everybody is agreed that some things went awry in this area. And even the President has said, yes, he wants to see this brought out. Let us find out what happened. Let us correct it. Let us cure it and let us get on with it. I do not know whether our debate here on the floor is going to take up time pushing this idea that somehow, or implying at least, that we are trying to avoid some sort of discussion or the President is trying to avoid some kind of discussion on Huang, Trie, and others, because I do not think that is the case. I know the Justice Department, as I understand it--and this is just from news reports; I have not talked to the people over there--but as I understand it, they have 25 FBI agents assigned to investigate exactly this matter that we are talking about on the floor this afternoon. So if we need to, on the Governmental Affairs Committee, get into those areas because they involve, obviously, allegations of illegality, we will do so. So I just want to make that comment that we are united, I think, in the Senate on both sides of the aisle and down to Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House on finding out what happened with Mr. Huang, Mr. Chung, and Mr. Trie, and bring that information out so we can correct whatever the situation was or get new legislation if that is needed to correct it. So we are all committed to that. I yield the floor. Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. I respond to my friend, no.

Mr. GLENN. Will my friend yield?

Mr. GLENN. I thank my friend. I reply that the Governmental Affairs Committee has more broad jurisdiction on investigations than any committee here. It doesn't mean that we do those things legislatively then, but we are a committee that does investigations. We have done broad investigations in drug matters, for instance, and investigations and hearings regarding that. Yet, we turn that legislation over, we turn our information over to other people to form the legislative background they need to bring it here to the Senate. We have conducted hearings on espionage in the past, and we certainly don't have authority in those areas. But we are given broad investigative powers and staff and money to look into these things as part of our regular jurisdiction. This committee was known through the years as a committee that took on organized crime. It was known back in those days, originally, as the Truman committee, PSI subcommittee that we have, and the McClellan subcommittee. We took on organized crime. But we didn't do the legislative matters, the legislating that had to be done. We turned the results over to other committees. More recently, we have looked at fraudulent health programs involving the District of Columbia here and West Virginia and, I believe, part of Virginia, also. We didn't propose to do the legislation in those areas. For many years, I have personally been as involved as anybody in the Senate on matters regarding nuclear nonproliferation. Yet, primarily, that was not something we had to go ahead and put legislation in on, although I did use that to put legislation in many years ago. We have had investigations on terrorism, and it fell to other people to have the legislation.

Mr. GLENN. I have indeed.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I will not make prolonged remarks this evening, but I must reply to some of the things that have been said here because the implication, at least, has been that somehow Governmental Affairs was usurping jurisdiction or something, and that Rules are protecting their turf in making sure this jurisdiction was not taken over by Governmental Affairs. I think we need to briefly review the bidding and how we got where we are. When all this matter of campaign finance reform first came up, there were a number of committees in the Senate that thought they had a piece of this and wanted to have hearings or were quoted in the paper as saying they might look into it. We had Commerce, Judiciary, Foreign Relations, the Rules Committee, and Governmental Affairs--all were involved. What was decided in centering this in Governmental Affairs was not a decision made on the Democratic side at all. To concentrate this in the Governmental Affairs Committee was a decision of the Republican leadership, that they did not want this strung out all over the lot. And with Governmental Affairs having the preeminent investigative authority in the Senate, they would concentrate everything there. The newspaper reports, at least, indicated that the leadership got the other committee chairmen to sign off with that approach, and it was announced that the Governmental Affairs Committee was going to take the lead in this. That was not a decision made on the minority side. That was a decision made and carried out on the majority side. So there was no effort whatsoever by anybody to take some jurisdiction away from another committee. Now, let us follow this through just very briefly as to what happened. When did the Rules Committee finally get interested in this and decide it was in their jurisdiction? Only after the funding request came from the Governmental Affairs Committee and the members on the Rules Committee, who really do not want campaign finance reform, blocked the funding, period, not in an official committee meeting, but in a meeting just of the Republicans on that committee. Why did they object to the funding rules? Because they have an objection to campaign finance reform. This got into a real impasse, a real impasse with Republican leadership. So, then it became a deal cut to say we will water down what Governmental Affairs is going to do and we will let the Rules Committee handle this, because we have members opposed to campaign finance reform on the Rules Committee. It has been pointed out that we have members now on the Rules Committee that are also on the Governmental Affairs Committee, three crossovers, three people with dual membership on both committees, who voted on the Rules Committee to do what this Senate Resolution 39 that we are debating is supposed to do. But I would point out, those are the same three members who voted unanimously on the Governmental Affairs Committee, unanimously on the scope, unanimously on what was to be looked into, unanimously there would be no-holds-barred, unanimously we would look into soft money, unanimously we would look into legal, illegal, improper, whatever--wherever the track led us. That is what they voted for on the Governmental Affairs Committee, and that is the reason it went to the Rules Committee that way. It was only after members of the Rules Committee put this whole thing into a quagmire of dissent and were going to block any funding that this so-called compromise arrangement--or capitulation, I would term it--was worked out. And that is just exactly how this thing developed. So, all the talk here about how the Rules Committee members voted this so it must be right because they are also on Governmental Affairs ignores that they are the ones who voted unanimously on Governmental Affairs for the scope, for everything we wanted to look into. We hoped we could work out a goal. All of these things that were voted out of committee only got objections after it got over to the Rules Committee where any funding was stopped by the people who basically do not want any campaign finance reform. I hate to be so blunt, but that is exactly----

Mr. GLENN. I will yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN. No, let me correct that, because what happened on this was that was a proposal from the Democratic side. It was voted down on Republican side. And the $6.5 million was voted out of committee to the Rules Committee and the Democrats, who had thought we could get by with a much lower figure because every other committee had, going into this investigation with the idea that you always could come back and ask for money--which was done in the case of Watergate, with five different allocations of money. They voted out of committee $6.5 million. That is what went to the Rules Committee. So we had gotten past that hurdle there. We were going with $6.5 million over at Rules, and that is when Republican members on the Rules Committee objected to going forward. That was not the Democratic side. That is how we got to where we are right now. So I am sure we are going to have more debate on this tomorrow, but I just thought I better indicate here, this was not Governmental Affairs trying to usurp jurisdiction. That jurisdiction was given to us by the Republican leadership in trying to combine all of the different committees that wanted this investigation into one investigation, under the prime investigative committee in the Senate, which is the Governmental Affairs Committee. That was a decision of the Republican leadership. We had nothing to do with that on our side of the aisle. It only came apart, even after it was voted out of the Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously, by all Republican members, and got over to the Rules Committee and ran into trouble with some who want no campaign finance reform and objected so strenuously that a deal had to be cut to let them have some jurisdiction back on the Rules Committee in the areas of soft money that they are so afraid will be changed, and brought it back over there where they would have more of a chance to control it. We, then, on the Governmental Affairs Committee, were charged with looking into only illegalities. That is a far narrower standard, when you get to investigating matters. We had hoped to have, and what the Republican members on the Governmental Affairs Committee had all voted for, was a broad investigation, no-holds-barred, let's set the basis for campaign finance reform for the future. That is basically what is being denied now. I yield the floor. Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to remind my fellow colleagues that today marks the 27th anniversary of the entering into force of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT. All too often, the contributions to U.S. security made by multilateral arrangements like the NPT go unrecognized. I will speak today of a treaty that--with the accession by Oman last January--now has 185 members. That is more than any international security treaty in history. Though it is true that the NPT has not eradicated the global threat of nuclear weapons proliferation--and that it faces some daunting challenges ahead --the treaty has undoubtedly served U.S. interests well and deserves the respect and support of all Members of Congress and indeed all Americans. Some Highlights Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks a list supplied by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency of all current signatories and parties to the NPT. The only major nonmembers are India, Pakistan, Israel, Brazil, and Cuba. The NPT was negotiated throughout the 1960's and was signed by Secretary of State Dean Rusk on July 1, 1968. The treaty commits the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China--the treaty's so- called nuclear-weapon states, defined as countries that detonated a nuclear explosive device before January 1, 1967--not to transfer, directly or indirectly, any nuclear explosive device or control over such a device to any other country, and ``not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce'' any non-nuclear-weapon state to acquire such a device. (Article I.) As for the latter states, the treaty obligates them to forswear the bomb and to agree to full-scope safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] over all of their nuclear materials. (Articles II and III.) The treaty also obligates all of its parties to pursue negotiations toward nuclear disarmament, indeed to pursue the eventual goal of a ``treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.'' (Article VI.) These respective obligations form the heart of the security obligations of members of the NPT. Though the treaty also encourages peaceful uses of atomic energy (Article IV), this encouragement obviously does not extend to help in making bombs or the fissile materials for use in such bombs. The ``NP'' in ``NPT'' continues to stand for nonproliferation--not ``Nuclear Proliferation'' or ``Nuclear Profiteering.'' New Challenges Ahead Now, many published critiques have already established that the NPT is far from a perfect treaty. Typically these include observations about the limits of safeguards, the treaty's lack of complete universality, the lack of mandatory sanctions for violations, the inclusion of anachronistic language about ``peaceful nuclear explosions,'' the lack of an explicit ban on nonnuclear-weapon states helping other nonnuclear-weapon states to acquire the bomb, and allegations about the treaty's discriminatory division of the world into nuclear have's and have not's. Though many of these specific criticisms are well-founded, I would like to identify some broader challenges that could someday jeopardize not just this treaty, but the very existence of nonproliferation as a basic norm of the international community. Ironically, the first major challenge may well come from the disarmers. Though the United States and Russia have recently made substantial reductions in their strategic arsenals, it is possible that, someday, dozens of nonnuclear-weapon states may reconsider their membership or abandon the treaty due to what they may believe is inadequate progress toward the goal of total nuclear disarmament. What a hypocritical step that would be: it would amount not just to a form of extortion, but one based on some rather peculiar logic--``either you disarm, right now, in the interests of world peace, or we will arm.'' How this will serve the interests of either peace or nonproliferation is beyond me. I agree that America and all the other nuclear-weapon states should reaffirm their obligation under the NPT to negotiate in good faith toward the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament. But I do not read the NPT itself as compelling the United States to disarm as a precondition for other countries to abide by the treaty. The START process has already shown the world that America and Russia are serious about deep cuts in nuclear arms. And the world community will rightfully expect Britain, France, and China to make deep cuts of their own, toward the eventual goal of eliminating all such weapons, as the treaty provides. I believe it is crucial that the nuclear-weapon states fulfill their end of the NPT bargain, but I do not believe that the complex and time-consuming process of nuclear arms reductions should serve as any pretext for further proliferation. The second major challenge to the NPT will come from advocates of commercial uses of plutonium or highly enriched uranium around the world. I would hate to see countries use the NPT as a pretext for new demands for access to sensitive technology relating to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. If, for example, the acceptance of full-scope safeguards is interpreted by some countries as constituting some form of entitlement to produce highly enriched uranium or to separate plutonium, then the world would be a more dangerous place indeed. We need less of such materials in world commerce, not more of them. I have no doubt that IAEA safeguards are good and that they are getting better, especially thanks to the agency's Programme 93+2 plan to improve safeguards, but the agency is already too under-funded and overworked to be taking on the new jobs of safeguarding a global plutonium economy, not to mention promoting one. And I continue to question the basic safeguardability of dangerous fuel cycle operations like reprocessing and enrichment, given the difficulty of preventing or even detecting diversions which, though small in size, would be quite sufficient to make bombs. Since no technical fix will ever eliminate all proliferation and terrorist threats from commercial uses of such materials, I would urge all supporters of nonproliferation to pursue a global moratorium or outright prohibition on all production of highly enriched uranium and the separation of all bomb-usable plutonium for any purpose. Our goal should not be the production by all or some countries of bomb-usable nuclear materials under safeguards--our goal should be a ban on the production of such materials, period. The key point to keep in mind about safeguards is that they serve as an important instrument in America's diplomatic tool kit for fighting proliferation. By themselves, safeguards do not in any way constitute a solution to the problem of proliferation. To the extent that they complement other U.S. nonproliferation initiatives, however, they thereby deserve our full support. A third major challenge facing the NPT is that the nuclear-weapon states will, for various reasons, compromise their not in any way to assist obligation under article I of the NPT. I have already seen signs of some erosion of this key duty, which on its face tolerates no forms of assistance. Various current and proposed export control reforms would, if fully implemented, undoubtedly open up new strains in the NPT's no assistance taboo. I have in mind here such proposals as the following: to relax controls over sensitive dual-use items going to friendly countries or members of multilateral regimes; to drop controls over goods that are no longer state-of-the-art--as though obsolete hydrogen bombs would be any less of a proliferation threat; to regulate or prohibit only significant forms of assistance; to authorize sensitive dual-use transfers so long as there is evidence that some other country is selling similar goods--this is the old ``foreign availability'' loophole; and to eliminate licensing requirements for many dual-use goods, and other such dubious schemes. Some of these themes were reflected in recent speech by a senior U.S. export control official, who said the following: We no longer have a clearly defined single adversary. Instead, we aim to restrict a narrow range of transactions that could assist in the development of weapons of mass destruction in irresponsible countries like Iran and Iraq. In attempting to do that, we have refocused our control system on a smaller group of truly critical goods and technologies and on specific problem end uses and end users in addition to the so-called pariah countries. [Source: Under Secretary of Commerce William Reinsch, speech before the National Security Industrial Association, February 25, 1997.] This quote illustrates the extent to which America's NPT's duty ``not in any way to assist'' is already being interpreted as meaning, in effect, ``* * * not to provide a narrow range of truly critical goods and technologies that could assist rogue nations to acquire nuclear explosive devices.'' The NPT, however, makes no distinction between so- called critical items and any other items--it rules out any and all assistance to any nonnuclear-weapon state. The irony of such reform proposals can be seen even more when one considers that export controls affect only a tiny fraction of U.S. trade. According to Commerce Department data for 1995, $99.20 out of every $100 in U.S. exports did not even require an export license. Not only that--of those exports that did require a license in that year, only one license out of a hundred was denied. In 1991, the Commerce Department received 30,537 export license applications--by 1995 this number had plummeted to only 9,845, and only 121 of these were ultimately denied. So the evidence is pretty slim, to say the least, to support any claim that rolling back on export controls will substantially boost America's competitiveness, except perhaps in the sense of increasing America's competitiveness as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. Yes indeed, America cannot only afford to comply in full with the NPT's ``not in any way to assist'' prohibition--from a security standpoint, it cannot afford not to comply with this obligation. Unfortunately, the dubious claim of commercial need is not the only factor eroding this prohibition under the NPT. The other threat appears in the form of well-meaning pleas coming from two strange bedfellows-- certain nongovernmental experts on nonproliferation, and various defense hawks and strategic theorists inside countries that are working on the bomb or keeping their bomb options wide open. I am referring specifically to proposals to substitute the ``management'' for the ``prevention'' of proliferation as a goal of U.S. policy. America, they argue, should help other countries to make to proliferation safe, to ensure that new regional balances of nuclear terror remain stable, and to take steps to ensure that new nuclear arsenals around the world will remain reliable and guarantee secure second strike capabilities. In other words--they appear to believe that America should now help to convert the old cold war doctrine of ``mutual assured destruction'' into an export commodity. Even highly esteemed organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations seem to be leaning in this direction. In a recent study released last January on U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy in South Asia and sponsored by the Council, the authors not only recommended this basic approach, but also called for new U.S. arms transfers and nuclear cooperation with both India and Pakistan with no nonproliferation strings attached, specifically no requirement for full-scope IAEA safeguards. [Source: Council on Foreign Relations, ``A New US Policy Toward India and Pakistan,'' Richard N. Haass, Chairman, January 1997.] Russia, meanwhile, seems intent on selling two nuclear reactors to India without full-scope safeguards, while China--which has never accepted such safeguards as a nuclear supply condition--continues to engage in nuclear cooperation with Pakistan. Unless the United States and other members of the world community rally in defense of the NPT and the heart of its verification scheme-- full-scope safeguards--I fear that more and more countries will be tempted to reassess their continued membership in that treaty. After all, why agree to safeguards restraints when the benefits of membership in the treaty can be obtained without such restraints? Nobody should take the future of this treaty for granted. By their nuclear supply practices in South Asia, Russia and China are simply making proliferation pay. Conclusion Mr. President, I would like to conclude by saying that if export controls remain a valuable instrument of nonproliferation, if the inertia toward the eventual goal of nuclear disarmament is sustained, if the inertia in some countries to make large-scale commercial uses of bomb materials can be broken, and if the zealots of regional nuclear deterrence can be kept in check, then I truly believe that the NPT will be with us for quite a while and the world will be better off as a result. If these conditions are not satisfied, I fear not just for the future of this treaty, but for the future of world peace. The list follows: Signatories and Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons--January 23, 1997 [Source: Arms Control and Disarmament Agency] Afghanistan. Albania. Algeria. Antigua and Barbuda. Andorra. Angola. Argentina. Armenia. Australia. Austria. Azerbaijan. Bahamas, The. Bahrain. Bangladesh. Barbados. Belarus. Belgium. Belize. Benin. Bhutan. Bolivia. Bosnia & Herzegovina. Botswana. Brunei. Bulgaria. Burkina Faso. Burundi. Cambodia. Cameroon. Canada. Cape Verde. Central African Republic. Chad. Chile. China. Colombia. Comoros. Congo, People's Republic of (Brazzaville). Costa Rica. Cote d'Ivoire. Croatia. Cyprus. Czech Republic. Denmark. Djibouti. Dominica. Dominican Republic. Ecuador. Egypt. El Salvador. Equatorial Guinea. Eritrea. Estonia. Ethiopia. Fiji. Finland. Former Yugoslav. Republic of Macedonia. France. Gabon. Gambia, The. Georgia. Germany, Fed. Republic of. Ghana. Greece. Grenada. Guatemala. Guinea. Guinea-Bissau. Guyana. Haiti. Holy See. Honduras. Hungary, Republic of. Iceland. Indonesia. Iran. Iraq. Ireland. Italy. Jamaica. Japan. Jordan. Kazakstan. Kenya. Kiribati. Korea, Democratic People's Republic of. Korea, Republic of. Kuwait. Kyrgyzstan. Laos. Latvia. Lebanon. Lesotho. Liberia. Libya. Liechtenstein. Lithuania. Luxembourg. Madagascar. Malawi. Malaysia. Maldive Islands. Mali. Malta. Marshall Islands. Mauritania. Mauritius. Mexico. Micronesia. Moldova. Monaco. Mongolia. Morocco. Mozambique. Myanmar (Burma). Namibia. Nauru. Nepal. Netherlands. New Zealand. Nicaragua. Niger. Nigeria. Norway. Oman. Palau. Panama. Papua New Guinea. Paraguay. Peru. Philippines. Poland. Portugal. Qatar. Romania. Russia. Rwanda. St. Kitts and Nevis. St. Lucia. St. Vincent and the Grenadines. San Marino. Sao Tome and Principe. Saudi Arabia. Senegal. Seychelles. Sierra Leone. Singapore. Slovakia. Slovenia. Solomon Islands. Somalia. South Africa. Spain. Sri Lanka. Sudan. Suriname. Swaziland. Sweden. Switzerland. Syrian Arab Republic. Taiwan. Tajikistan. Tanzania. Thailand. Togo. Tonga. Trinidad and Tobago. Tunisia. Turkey. Tuvalu. Turkmenistan. Uganda. Ukraine. United Arab Emirates. United Kingdom. United States. Uruguay. Uzbekistan. Vanuatu. Venezuela. Vietnam, Socialist Republic of. Western Samoa. Yemen. Yugoslavia, Socialist Federal Republic of. Zaire. Zambia. Zimbabwe. Total: 185 (Total does not include Taiwan or SFR Yugoslavia, which has dissolved.)

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Glenn pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 61 are located in today's Record under ``Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to submit a Senate resolution funding the Committee on Governmental Affairs for a special investigation of Federal election campaign fundraising and expenditure practices. Mr. President, this resolution is in response to the growing need for a fair, bipartisan investigation of the disturbing pattern of campaign fundraising at both the Presidential and congressional level in recent elections, as well as the need for campaign finance reform. The resolution incorporates the investigatory scope agreed upon by a vote of the Governmental Affairs Committee at its meeting on January 30, 1997. It also incorporates procedures to help ensure that the investigation will be bipartisan. This is critical to the success of the investigation, if success is defined in terms of forward movement of reform of our campaign fundraising practices. And reform can only occur if the public realizes the truth about campaign fundraising--that the abuses do not lie only on one side. Indeed, an unbalanced, partisan investigation that suggested that all the problems lie solely or even mainly with one party would be destructive to forging a consensus, and would lead to more political games, possibly including an attempt to pass reform legislation crafted not so much to fix the system as to give one party a fundraising advantage over the other. As the Ranking Democrat on Governmental Affairs, I have urged the Chairman and the other Republican members of the committee to follow standard Senate practice and enter into an agreement that the investigation will be conducted in a bipartisan manner with a balanced agenda, a clear statement of mission and legislative purpose, a fair set of rules of procedure, a timeframe for completion of the investigation with provision for extension if necessary, and a reasonable amount of money. Unfortunately and most disappoint-edly, agreement has eluded us thus far, despite many hours of discussion. Much attention has been lavished in the press on the difference between the proposed funding of this investigation by the Republican side--originally $6.5 million, subsequently reduced to $5.7 million after receipt of assurances that 10 FBI personnel would be detailed to the committee--and the Democratic side--an initial outlay of $1.8 million with provision for additional funds to be considered if necessary. But the length of the investigation and the fairness of the investigation are or equal importance. Length is important because an investigation that includes congressional fundraising as one of its foci should not extend significantly into an election year. Fairness is important if there is to be any credibility to the investigation. There has been, in my view, a certain amount of disinformation that has been disseminated about the position of the Democratic side regarding this investigation. I will have much to say about that at a later time. For now, I believe it is important for the public to know precisely what Democrats have been proposing for this investigation. This resolution incorporates these proposals. The resolution calls for a fair, bipartisan, adequately funded, potentially yearlong investigation into both Presidential and congressional fundraising practices, and requires that the McCain- Feingold bill be brought to the floor for consideration no later than May 1, 1997. I believe this is a reasonable proposal and I urge its passage.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise today to add my comments to the many others who have voiced their opposition to Senate Joint Resolution 1, the balanced budget constitutional amendment. Mr. President, like the others before me, let me preface my comments by stating clearly that I support balancing the Federal budget. I have for a long time. I wanted to balance the Federal budget clear back when it was only $1 trillion way back in the days when Jimmy Carter was still President. I note that the total Federal debt at that time was still under $1 trillion, totaled up for every President between George Washington and the end of the Carter years. So I do not come lately to this idea of balancing the Federal budget. I wholeheartedly agree we need to exercise discipline to both balance the budget and eliminate the deficit. But, Mr. President, I do not believe that changing our Constitution to require a balanced budget is in this country's best interests. For reasons I will outline, I believe that a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget is far more likely to cause more trouble, more harm, than good. The amendment before the Senate would dramatically change the way our political process has worked for over 200 years. While there have been times when partisan fighting may have caused what many term gridlock, I do not believe it is necessary or desirable to turn the fundamental concept of our system of Government on its head. Moreover, this amendment would ensure that gridlock is the rule rather than the exception. By requiring supermajorities in order to conduct the routine business of the Congress, this amendment overthrows the concept of majority rule and empowers minority factions to hold the Congress and the country hostage. I submit that this type of minority control of our Government is the exact evil the framers sought to eliminate in the drafting of our Constitution. For this reason alone I oppose the balanced budget constitutional amendment. It is not hyperbole when I say it is dangerous to our form of Government. Compounding the problem, Mr. President, is the fact that the proponents of this amendment would topple one of the basic tenets of our Government, as I see it, for no reason at all. First, from a historical perspective, the constitutional amendment is not needed. The only time in this country's history outside of times of war, the Great Depression, or recession that we have run up a significant deficit, one viewed as unmanageable, is in the preceding two decades through our time right now on the floor. We had the experiments in supply-side economics back during the last 12 years before President Clinton came in, which ran our debt from $1 trillion up to nearly $5 trillion. But we are no longer debating how we got into this situation we find ourselves in, pointing fingers, or placing blame for a deficit so staggering that it is beyond our comprehension or imagination. Instead, a more productive political consensus does now exist to bring the budget into balance and eliminate our deficit. So I do not think we need a constitutional requirement to balance the budget. Congress and the President, working together, have the ability, and now, I believe, the will to bring our budget into balance. Now, everybody describes this as being a political climate that is overly divisive. I agree. Congress in both Houses, on both sides of the aisle, and the President, all profess to want a balanced budget, and I do not doubt that. I think everyone does, and they want to eliminate the huge deficit that is the legacy of the 1980s. Now we have different ways we are looking at this thing, but we have made substantial strides in at least getting unanimous consent or unanimous opinion that this is something that we do have to deal with and do have to deal with now. But there are still some very basic disagreements on how to achieve the balance and how to reduce the deficit. The Democrats and Republicans alike have proposed balancing the budget by the year 2002, and the deficit has been reduced from 5.1 percent of our gross domestic product in fiscal year 1986 to only 1.4 percent in fiscal year 1996. Mr. President, 5.1 of GDP in 1986 down to 1.4 percent just 10 years later in 1996. Right here and right now we are working toward achieving the very goal of the balanced budget constitutional amendment without sacrificing our democratic form of Government to get there. I might put those figures in a different term. When President Clinton came in, our national budget deficit was running at $290 billion a year. We passed on this very floor one of the toughest votes that many of us have made since being in the Senate. We passed during the Reconciliation Act in August of 1993 the President's program, without having one single Republican vote--not a one in either the Senate or the House of Representatives; not a one--and there were all sorts of predictions about what horrible things were going to happen to the economy and the millions of unemployed that would be added to the rolls. What happened? Well, that did not happen and we have gone on with a very, very, strong economy, and we have gone from a budget deficit of $290 billion down to $107 billion for the latest estimate for what 1996 will turn out to be. We are in the middle of doing something right here. We are doing it right now with action that we have taken in this Congress. This is not something we are waiting for and hoping for some magic wand like a balanced budget amendment. This is something that we are doing right now and we are headed toward a balanced budget. I grant anyone that wants to discuss this, we, in fact, are looking forward to some times out here where it will be tougher to do that, tougher to balance the budget. We know that. But that will require some equally tough votes on this floor. I hope when we make those tough votes on this floor we have support from the other side of the aisle that we did not have when we made that vote the summer of 1993. Now, in Treasury Secretary Rubin's words, a balanced budget constitutional amendment ``could turn slowdowns into recessions, and average recessions into more severe ones,'' and he added, ``it would seriously increase the risk of default on our national debt.'' Those are quotes taken from Secretary Rubin's February 2, op-ed in the the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent that his Washington Post op-ed piece be printed at the end of my remarks.

Mr. GLENN. It is a thoughtful piece that makes a very powerful argument against this amendment. Economists consider a balanced budget requirement to be what they would call procyclical. In other words, adding to the cycle instead of correcting the cycle. It makes it worse. It is an economic autopilot. When revenues are slow coming into the Federal coffers because the economy is slow, deeper spending cuts have to be made to make up for the revenue shortfall in order to keep the budget in balance. We have AFDC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, trade adjustments assistance, all of these things cut in during the beginning of a recessionary period, and the farther we get into that approach to a depression the more these programs sort of prime the pump or level things off. There is no way that can be shown better than the chart that has been on the floor here many, many times in the past. I will hold this up to illustrate, but we have seen this real economic growth, and you can see what happened on this chart. Way back in the 1880's and 1900's on the wide cyclical swings and what happened post World War II, and we got some of the countercyclical programs in place. Look how the economy has just leveled out in that period of time. The economy has leveled out with no great huge swings down like we had during the Great Depression when I was a boy back home in New Concord, OH. These are things that would happen again, we would get back into the wild swings, if we, indeed, had the balanced budget amendment passed, because there is no other way to get the money to take care of the requirements of a balanced budget amendment unless you either cut many of those programs back or raise taxes. That is the other source of revenue. If you did that, either one of those things would be exactly the wrong thing to do and would add to the inclination, the trend, toward a cycle that we want to stamp out, not make worse. It is sort of a perverse, Look, Ma, no hands approach to budget, the exact wrong thing for a slow economy. That is why Secretary Rubin says the balanced budget amendment ``can take an economic slowdown and turn it into a recession and then take a recession and make it even worse.'' I submit that is probably exactly an analysis that most economists would show happened back during the days of Herbert Hoover when he tried to raise taxes to make sure we were not going into more of a deficit position. I cannot believe the proponents intend to force us into this kind of an economic straitjacket. I know the people across the country want a balanced budget. So they say, ``Balanced budget amendment, oh, that sounds great, that sounds magical after the last 12 or 14 years when we had budgets run sky-high and deficits running sky-high.'' So that sounds very attractive. I think when the people of this country know what will be cut, they are informed about what will be cut, informed they will have difficulty within their communities with AFDC and food stamps and unemployment insurance and things like that that are administered by the States, but partly with Federal dollars, then I think they would realize this is more of a danger than anything they have come up against for some time. Mr. President, I grew up during the Great Depression. I was about 10 or 12 years old in the depths of the Great Depression. During those 4 years we had 20 percent of the country unemployed and 1 year when almost 25 percent were unemployed. What happened? The country had hit a situation it had never been able to handle before. We always were proud in this country of families taking care of families, of communities taking care of themselves. They didn't look for outside help. In those days of the Great Depression, in the town of New Concord, OH, my hometown, everybody planted big gardens. My dad rented an extra couple of acres, in addition to our big garden, and we grew our own food and took it down and gave it to neighbors. We shared in those days. That's how we got by. But everybody wasn't that fortunate. In some of our cities, we had soup kitchens on the corner where people could get something to eat in order to keep them going. We used to see what we called the ``bums'' going by on Route 40, and that went right by our house, as a matter of fact. We called them the ``bums'' because they were people who were, quite often, walking or getting a ride in a railroad boxcar across country someplace. They would get off sometimes and come up to the house and knock on the back door and ask my mother if she could give them something to eat. She never turned anyone down that came to that back door, I can guarantee you that. They were good people, down on their luck. I'm sure some were deadbeats that weren't much to begin with. But they were Americans and they were hungry, and it was the Great Depression and it was tough. The movie reels of those days show the Okies heading west out of the dust pit in Oklahoma with the mattress on top of the car, because communities had lost control. What happened? Programs were put in by Roosevelt--programs that we still argue about on the floor of the Senate to this day--and they primed the pump. That is the point I want to make. They primed the pump. They may have been very wasteful for 1 or 2 years, but they primed the pump and got our economy going again. You can make a million jokes about those time periods, but they are not a joke, as far as I am concerned, because I remember them very well. I remember one conversation between my dad and mother that I will never forget as long as I live. We had finished dinner and I went in the other room. I heard them quietly talking at the kitchen table, and they were discussing whether the mortgage was going to be foreclosed on our home. You talk about striking terror in the heart of a 10-year-old boy--that was me. I didn't know where we were going to go. That was a bad one. Do you know what happened? FHA was put in, and it was possible to negotiate a mortgage then with that kind of a Government guarantee that helped people like my dad and mom have a shot at keeping the home. Lots of mortgages were foreclosed and people could not keep their homes. Those are the days we were living in then. The point I'm making is that the pump-priming efforts at that time worked. They largely put our economy back to work again and got it going again. It wasn't perfect and never had been completely healed until we got through World War II, I guess. That was the ultimate primer of pumps, World War II. Anyway, the program of having countercyclical funds that cut in when a recession starts or when a downturn really gets serious is something that works. It works just as well as it did back in those days of the Great Depression. It worked, obviously, from the time, since 1946, that we started the first of these programs, and we have built on similar programs since that time that really do work. A balanced budget amendment would force us, in a time when we are in deficit, to dig into those things and cut down on those funds, or raise taxes, either of which would be exactly the wrong thing to do at that cycle of depression or near depression. Another truly frightening consequence of the adoption of a balanced budget requirement is the fact that it puts the creditworthiness of the United States of America at risk. Mr. President, this is a concept that I admit I find to be almost unimaginable. By requiring a supermajority to raise the debt ceiling, this constitutional amendment would allow 41 Members of this body--not a majority, but a minority of the Senate--to trade the creditworthiness of this country for the passage of legislation that otherwise would not pass the Senate. In other words, it is what has been termed in the past as the ``tyranny of the minority.'' Try and imagine what default by the Government of the United States of America would do to the world's financial markets. I can't. I am not saying this will happen necessarily, Mr. President, but I cannot support an amendment to our Constitution that would allow a minority to dictate legislation to a majority of the Senate or place our creditworthiness at risk. I want to take a minute to talk about what this amendment would do to our ability to make expenditures in order to respond to emergencies, natural disasters, or even military operations, like Desert Shield, where we were not technically engaged in a military conflict. I will only take a minute. This amendment prevents us from doing anything in these situations without the agreement of a supermajority, for all intents and purposes--even for military. The practical implications of this amendment are that Congress may be able to offer assistance to tornado or hurricane victims, or victims of any other natural disaster, if that disaster happens early in a fiscal year because only a majority vote would probably be necessary while we are still on budget, while things are looking well. But if a disaster happens in the third or fourth quarter of the fiscal year, those disaster victims are on their own, unless three-fifths of the Congress agrees to provide some sort of assistance. These same accounting practicalities will not be lost on our potential adversaries, either. I don't think it is too big a leap of logic to say that Saddam Hussein would not have to be a financial genius to figure out that if he wants to make another run at Kuwait, it is better to move the republican guard units in the third or fourth quarter of a fiscal year, because it will take the action of three- fifths of both Houses of Congress to approve funding for any military operations, which would bring the budget out of balance. Mr. President, that is a completely unacceptable way for the United States of America to act, I feel. That is the straitjacket that this balanced budget amendment would put us into if it were passed. So, to me, these are some very serious flaws in the constitutional requirement. There are also separation of powers concerns raised by this amendment. Let us take the situation in which it is discovered during a fiscal year that the budget will not balance and that outlays will exceed expenditures. If the Congress fails to approve additional spending by the required three-fifths majority, the President might feel compelled to impound funds in order to bring the budget into balance. Now, the President would decide what to fund and what not to fund. Mr. President, let me state that again. The President, in that situation, would decide what to fund and what not to fund, because that is what he would be required to do by law. This represents a shift in power to the President that once rested with a simple majority in the Congress. A similar troubling situation would be where the budget goes out of balance or never gets into balance, and the President does not correct the situation. Say the President doesn't want to do anything about this. He says, OK, we are not going to correct it. What do we do? In that circumstance, do you know what would happen? The courts would step in and decide which programs would be funded and which programs would not be funded, again, taking away what has heretofore been a congressional prerogative. Then there are equity issues that argue against passage of the balanced budget constitutional amendment. This amendment is a policy decision not just about how to keep the books, but also about who will benefit from Federal spending programs. It cannot be denied, and should not be overlooked, that the Tax Code's tax breaks to individuals and corporations are a type of Government spending. Not everyone realizes it, but when an individual's or corporation's tax burden is reduced by a tax break, that is Government spending, and we should not forget that. Eliminating these tax breaks is considered increasing revenues. Under the balanced budget amendment before us, Congress can increase revenues only by a majority vote of both Houses. In contrast, cutting funding for programs requires only a majority vote by those present and voting or could even be passed on a voice vote. This is not an esoteric point, Mr. President, because in program terms, this amendment creates a presumption in favor of cutting funding for programs because it is easier to do. I argue that this presumption favors the more affluent in our society, because their Federal spending programs, known as the Tax Code, are more difficult to cut than the spending programs of the less affluent. That kind of an imbalance just plain is not fair. Finally, Mr. President, I must mention the relationship that exists between this balanced budget amendment and Social Security. As the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, Social Security expenditures will increase dramatically. And despite the fact that some action has been taken in anticipation of this demographic shift in the population, this balanced budget amendment would have us pay for baby boom Social Security out of current year revenues and will likely break the bank. Right now, we are paying more into Social Security so that we can generate surpluses to pay for the baby boomers when they reach retirement age. This approach is far sounder than expecting to pay this enormous expense out of a single year's revenues. I'm afraid that the only way we would get there under a balanced budget requirement is either to reduce substantially the benefit baby boomers receive or cut radically other Government programs. This is just another example of where, in my view, a constitutional requirement to balance the budget in the manner proposed will do more harm than good. Mr. President, we all want to eliminate the enormous deficits of the recent past. We all want to bring the budget into balance and keep it in balance when it makes sense to do so. And, it would be a lot easier to stand here and have the American taxpayer believe that supporting this legislation is a simple way to solve all of our problems. But it's not the right thing to do, Mr. President. This legislation forces this country into a budgetary straightjacket and it limits democracy as we have known it for more than 200 years. It's unsound from an economic perspective and it is unfair to the less wealthy. It puts this Nation's security at risk and it prevents us from responding to disasters. And it could result in the elimination of virtually all Government programs except Social Security once the baby boom reaches retirement age. As I said, Mr. President, it would be easy to say that I support the legislation before us because the concept of requiring a balanced budget appeals to the average American--but only on a superficial level. Regrettably, for the reasons I've outlined, the solution isn't so simple and I cannot support this legislation. Mr. President, let me just summarize once again. We are on the way to a balanced budget now with the existing Federal budgeting processes. We have been since the summer of 1993. I do not think most Americans yet have gotten this fact driven home to them. They are so accustomed to deficits coming out of Washington that they can't believe that we really are heading toward a balanced budget. We can't do it all in 1 year or we would destroy the economy. But what we have done is, with the budget reconciliation bill that was passed in August 1993, we are proceeding step by step toward a balanced budget. It has gone from a budget deficit of $290 billion a year when President Clinton came into office down to an estimated $107 billion for the year 1996. That is certainly measurable progress. It was estimated earlier that would go down this year to about $40 billion. That may be revised up a little. We have to take some action to do that. But to go the drastic step of a balanced budget amendment that would deal so unfairly with so many people I think is something that we do not want to do. Mr. President, we have programs that are called countercyclical. Those programs cut in as the economy gets worse. They automatically cut in and dampen that slide and bring it back up again. It prevents things like the deep Depression of the early thirties and all of the wild swings that used to occur back before we had some of these countercyclical programs. There is no way that you can get by it with a balanced budget amendment. You are going to be cutting some of these programs like AFDC, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, maybe Medicaid, and trade adjustment assistance. Those are all things that would be targets for potential cuts. The money has to come from somewhere. With the balanced budget amendment you have no choice but to cut, or, if you want to keep the balance, raise taxes, either one of which would be absolutely wrong on an economic cycle basis. Mr. President, for all of those reasons, and others that I have not even mentioned here today but which Mr. Rubin refers to in his Outlook piece in the Washington Post that I asked to be placed in the Record, I think it would be unwise to go for a balanced budget amendment that puts us in an economic straitjacket. I think we need to continue our efforts here on a bipartisan basis, on both sides, here and over in the House, and do the things that we see are working right now with our budget. Continue those, and we can have a balanced budget if we all work together on this without violating the Constitution or without going back into the Constitution, which will enable us to do it. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1997] The Balanced Budget Brawl (By Robert E. Rubin) I spent 26 years on Wall Street before joining the Clinton administration and came to believe deeply in the profound importance of fiscal responsibility to our national economy. I have now spent four years working in government to implement this conviction, which members of both parties share. However, I have an equally strong conviction that a balanced budget amendment is a threat to Social Security and our economic health. it will expose our economy to unacceptable risks and should not be adopted. Like the 11 Nobel Prize-winning economists and 1,000 other economists who signed a letter on Thursday to ``condemn'' the amendment, I believe it is strongly against our national interest. A balanced budget amendment would reduce our ability to cope with recessions, risk putting budgetary decisions in the hands of the courts and create risks with respect to Social Security. Should we balance the budget? Yes. Do we need a new constitutional amendment? No. Throughout our history, with the exception of wartime and the Depression, budget deficits--when they existed at all-- were generally small. In the 1970s and 1980s, they began to rise and the cumulative federal debt grew sharply. But after experiencing this period of fiscal indiscipline. I believe the atmosphere in Washington has changed. In 1993, we took an enormous step forward with the deficit reduction program, which has cut the deficit from 4.7 percent to 1.4 percent of gross domestic product. Last year, both the administration and Congress proposed budgets that would eliminate the deficit by 2002, and both are expected to do so again this year. There is also a new enforcement factor at work, which is the emergence of global markets attuned to fiscal responsibility. Those markets will punish a national that does not address fiscal matters by imposing high interest rates that can severely impair its economy. Today, politically, historically and economically, the forces are in place to balance the budget. And I believe we will. However, there is a distinction between that and passing a constitutional amendment. I believe the balanced budget amendment proposal would subject the nation to unacceptable economic risks in perpetuity. First, it could turn slowdowns into recessions and average recessions into more severe ones. Second, it could prevent us from dealing expeditiously with emergencies such as natural disasters or military threats. Third, it would seriously increase the risk of default on our national debt. Fourth, the escape clauses it provides are likely to be far from fully effective. The escape clauses would also enable a minority in either the House or Senate to use its leverage to subject the nation to unacceptable economic risks. Fifth, a balanced budget amendment poses immense enforcement problems that might well lead to the involvement of the courts in budget decisions, unprecedented impoundment powers for the president or the temporary cessation of all federal payments, including, for example, Social Security. Alternatively, the balanced budget amendment might be unenforceable and therefore have no effect at all, contributing to cynicism about the process of government. For these and other reasons, a balanced budget amendment poses unacceptable risks. Let me elaborate. More severe recessions. As secretary of the treasury, I am deeply concerned that a balanced budget amendment could worsen recessions or downturns, first by eliminating automatic stabilizers that protect people during a downturn and, second, by forcing tax increases or spending decreases precisely in the midst of a slowdown or recession when the economy is already suffering from lack of demand. Since World War II, we have made substantial progress in reducing the toll of the boom-and-bust cycle through the introduction of automatic fiscal stabilizers and effective use of counter-cyclical fiscal policy. For example, if unemployment rises, unemployment insurance payments rise as well, moderating the economic impact of recessions and job losses on companies workers and their families. A balanced budget amendment would undo this progress and put more people out of work during downturns by turning off these stabilizers and foreclosing action to soften a recession. Even if Congress wanted to put back the stabilizers (an act that would require a three-fifths vote), slowdowns and recessions are hard to recognize or anticipate. Congressional action would almost surely come, at the very best, months later, by which time critical damage to the economy would already have been done. Inability to cope with crises. A balanced budget amendment would also prevent us from dealing quickly and effectively with major problems, from a second savings and loan crisis to a second Hurricane Hugo to an escalating military threat. For example, in September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the Carolinas, causing billions of dollars of damage. After President Bush declared a disaster, Congress immediately appropriated $2.7 billion in emergency assistance. Under the balanced budget amendment, if the budget were otherwise in balance, this could not be done until after a vote of 60 percent in both houses. Increased risk of default. As secretary of the treasury, I am also concerned that limits on our flexibility would increase the risk of default on the federal debt. The possibility of default should never be on the table. Our credit-worthiness is an invaluable national asset that should not be subject to question. Default on payment of our debt would undermine our credibility with respect to meeting financial commitments, and that in turn would have adverse effects for decades to come. A failure to pay interest on our debt could raise the cost of borrowing not only for government, but for private borrowers including small businesses and homeowners. Finally, as we saw in 1995 and 1996, the history of debt limits shows that raising the statutory debt limit is never an easy process. Yet right now it is possible to raise the debt limit with a simple majority vote in both houses. By requiring a three-fifths supermajority vote, the amendment would make it far more difficult. Potential for gridlock. Proponents argue that when necessary, Congress would waive the provision of this amendment with a three-fifths vote. But, in fact, the history of Congress shows that it can be extremely difficult to obtain such a majority, and would be even more difficult when the issue is the momentous one of waiving a provision of the Constitution. While 60 votes are usually required in the Senate for cloture--that is, ending debate and bringing a matter to a vote--and the members have long honored the rights of a minority, the Senate also recognizes that certain matters should not be held up. It therefore permits a reconciliation bill, which can be a vehicle for passing a budget or increasing the debt limit, to be passed by a simple majority. Under this amendment, 41 Senators or 175 House members could hold our economy hostage to a special agenda. Enforcement difficulties. A balanced budget amendment poses immense enforcement problems. If the budget is not in balance, there is no way to compel Congress and the president to enact legislation to cut spending or raise taxes to make it so. Yet there is also no way to compel enactment of legislation to waive the provisions of the amendment. It is not hard to imagine a situation in which a two-fifths minority of Congress opposes tax increases, a different two- fifths minority opposes spending cuts, and another two-fifths minority opposes a waiver of the balanced budget amendment or a raise of the debt limit. The amendment provides no method for resolving such an impasse and it could well end up being decided by the courts. Some proponents have suggested that under these circumstances, the president would stop issuing checks, including those for Social Security. Alternatively, judges might become deeply involved in determining budget policy, including whether Social Security or Medicare checks should be stopped. The president might also impound funds of his choosing, including Social Security. Of course, the amendment might just prove to be unenforceable, reducing respect for the Constitution. All of these potential outcomes are extremely undesirable. A balanced budget amendment would embed economic policy inflexibility into the Constitution in the face of unknowable economic and political conditions 10, 20, 30 or 40 years from today. I have a deep commitment to the importance of deficit reduction and fiscal discipline to our nation's economic health, and I believe that we can put in place balanced budget legislation this year. But I have an equally strong conviction that a balanced budget amendment poses real risks for our nation's economy. Congress should not adopt it.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I just wanted to thank my good friend for those overly generous and very kind remarks. It was not without a lot of feeling and emotion that I made the decision not to run again in 1998. But, as I said, we have never invented a cure for the common birthday. And at the end of my next term I would be 83, if I assumed that I won. It was for that reason and that reason only that I chose not to run. My good friend, the minority leader, is absolutely right. I think one of the biggest things we have to face is some of the disparaging remarks about Government when some people talk down Government. And we are going to be working on those things over the next 2 years. I happened to be in the cloakroom. I had been in another meeting, and just happened to come out here on the floor. I had not realized that this was going to be a time when the minority leader was going to be making the remarks. And I just wanted to say how much I appreciate it. Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GLENN. Today I am releasing a report, prepared at my direction by the minority staff of the Governmental Affairs Committee, on property and asset management at the Department of Energy. The report, aptly titled ``Lost and Still Missing,'' discusses at some length the chronic personal property management problems at the Department, problems that have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer- purchased equipment. Recently, DOE has made some progress in tackling this problem, but much more needs to be done. For many years, missing property and equipment and poor inventory controls have been a major problem at the Department of Energy. Estimates by the IG and GAO of the value of lost and unaccounted for equipment have ranged from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Missing equipment includes computers, furniture, machine tools, electric pumps, and cameras, plus more exotic items like semi- and flatbed trailers, electronic switchgear, nuclear fuel reprocessing equipment and technology, diesel engines, cranes and armored personnel carriers. So we are not talking about a few missing pencils and paper clips. These are costly items. And all too often it appears that this material just flies out of DOE inventory and disappears into thin air. Furthermore, equipment in working order and usable supplies have been sold as surplus for a small fraction of their market value. Other equipment has been left outdoors to be ruined by the elements. Finally, many of the missing items are national security sensitive and did not go through proper demilitarization and declassification procedures. Our review also found that the problem of missing property and poor inventory controls is not unique to any one DOE site, but is prevalent at numerous sites, including, among others, the Portsmouth Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant, the Rocky Flats Plant, the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Fernald Environmental Restoration Corporation, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The specific problems at each site are discussed at length in the report. Some go back a couple of years, others are more recent. Let me give you a few examples. Rocky Flats, CO--GAO identified $29 million in missing equipment. Missing items included: a semi-trailer, a boat, forklifts, furnaces, over 1,800 pieces of computer equipment, and 8 armored personnel carriers. The armored personnel carriers are a story in their own right. DOE initially donated the 8 carriers to a military museum, but did not demilitarize them. The museum gave one of the carriers away, which was subsequently resold twice before winding up in the hands of a man who supplies props to Hollywood movie studios. Since then, DOE has repossessed the vehicles. Idaho National Engineering Laboratory--DOE sold as surplus national security sensitive nuclear fuel reprocessing equipment to a scrap dealer for $154,000 who then tried to sell it to a British company. Once the Department discovered its mistake, it bought back the equipment for $475,000. A separate sale to the same individual included between 25 and 50 personal computers whose hard drives were not sanitized in accordance with Department and GSA regulations. Unfortunately because INEL's records were so poor, it was not possible to determine exactly how many computers were sold, or, more importantly, whether they contained national security sensitive or restricted data. Sandia, NM--An on-site inspection by the inspector general revealed that computers, machine tools, furniture, and rolls of cable were left outside for long periods of time. When Sandia officials tried to reuse the equipment, they discovered that it had been ruined by the elements. Other equipment had been improperly mixed with radiologically- contaminated items. Portsmouth, OH--Equipment valued at $35 million was sold for less than $2 million. DOE's own documents indicate that some of this equipment may be nuclear proliferation sensitive. This includes technology used in the enrichment of uranium. Why do these problems exist? It is a simple two-word answer. Poor management. In some cases, the Department failed to provide effective policy, or negotiated management and operating contracts that did not meet its own regulations on property management; in others, the field offices failed to provide adequate oversight, especially in the development and review of property management systems. These failures have been compounded by antiquated property tracking systems with poor records, lack of proper training for employees charged with property management, wide variations in local policies that implement Department regulations, and, for one site at least--Rocky Flats--a failure, both in the field and at headquarters, to follow up on cases where there was reason to suspect theft. The main reason for the Department's pervasive and decades-long problems with property management likely lies in its perception of the importance of its national security mission. This perception has resulted in the downgrading in importance of more routine responsibilities, such as proper accounting, custodianship, and disposal of equipment and other personal property. As one high-ranking Department official was quoted in the Washington Post: ``When it's the life and death of civilization, people start being sloppy about some other things.'' That statement is grandiloquent excess at best, and utter nonsense as an excuse for poor management. In any case, the Department must finally recognize that its cold war mission is over. Now more than ever, the taxpayers are demanding cost-effective Government. In and of themselves the personal property problems discussed in the report are significant and deserve management attention. The importance of addressing these problems is further compounded because DOE is just beginning to address long-term downsizing issues associated with the changes from its cold war mission. For example, within the next 10 years, DOE's installed capacity to produce and test nuclear weapons will be reduced to 10 percent of its cold war level. As a result DOE will need to dispose of thousands of fixed assets--including buildings, real property, vehicles, equipment, precious metals, fuel, et cetera. To manage this asset disposition process efficiently, DOE will need to carefully take to heart the lessons learned from the personal property management problems discussed in this report. Recently the Department has taken encouraging and good faith efforts to correct some of these deficiencies, including the renegotiation of the personal property requirements in both new and existing M and O contracts, and implementing guidance and regulations on the handling of proliferation sensitive property. However, these efforts must be continued and expanded. The report contains a number of recommendations on ways to improve personal property management. Our principal recommendation is that the Department establish a centralized Office of Property and Asset Management that would report directly to the Secretary. Currently, personal property, real property, and asset management responsibilities are spread across too many offices, both at headquarters and in the field, and that is one reason why the Department has such a problem. No one is accountable. I will be taking this and the other recommendations up with Secretary-designee Pena as he goes through the confirmation process. I am sending letters today to both Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Bumpers of the Energy Committee in the hope that they will address the matter during confirmation hearings. This issue needs to be addressed at the highest level, not relegated to the bureaucratic backwaters as all too often has happened in the past. In closing, our review is based on reports from the General Accounting Office and the DOE inspector general, documents obtained from the Department, interviews with Department officials, committee hearing records, press accounts and official DOE responses to questions that both the staff and I addressed to the Department. We have copies of the full report for those who would like it, and they could request it from my office. I ask unanimous consent the report be printed in the Record.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I have listened very carefully to my friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee and the chairman of our committee, and heard him describe an investigation that he plans to conduct as chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee. I welcome his comments. As the ranking member of the committee and as someone who was chairman for some 8 years, this can be a most important hearing for our committee. Today I want to publicly pledge to him my best efforts to cooperate in establishing the bipartisan atmosphere that he called for and that I believe Senator Thompson genuinely wants to have as we go forward. I am pleased that Chairman Thompson in his opening remarks mentioned the importance of defining the scope of the investigation and its purpose. He also talked about principles that should be applied if the investigation is to be successful. I will refer back to these principles a little later in my remarks. But I think it was helpful that Chairman Thompson included a partial list of areas to be considered. There is no question that the issues raised in his list are among those that ought to be examined, and I support them. I agree with him fully when we talk about the informing function of Congress, but I agree with it more as a starting point than as an end to our investigation. I think it becomes far more meaningful that instead of just limiting this to the 1996 Presidential campaign, we also use this informing function to recommend what can be done about the situation we are investigating. I think that is what the American people want. So I think that a more meaningful, fair list must include additional questions about improper practices in national campaigns. In addition to looking at the problem of foreign contributions, which certainly should be looked at, the Governmental Affairs Committee must look, for example, at the problem of soft money used by unregistered organizations without disclosure and without limitation to influence elections, and the misuse of Government offices and staff for political purposes, and abuses of power in coercing campaign contributions, the misuse of charitable and other organizations and promises of special access to Government-elected officials. The Governmental Affairs Committee should look into these types of practices whether examples are found in connection with the executive or the legislative branch. My point, Mr. President, is this: There is no end to the questions that might be asked about improper or illegal fundraising and spending in political campaigns. So we need to establish objectives for the investigation without making the inquiry too narrow and thereby risk at least a perceived partisan approach. Defining the committee's objectives will help determine the scope of the investigation, but, most of all, the committee's scope should be determined by the committee's purpose in these investigations. Any major Senate investigation --and this will be one--ought to have a clear purpose. To make an analogy, I recall many of my colleagues asking on this Senate floor not too long ago when we were considering United States entry into Bosnia, what is the exit strategy? Demands were made for an exit strategy before there would be a vote. That was a reasonable question then, and I think it is a reasonable question in regard to this inquiry. In each context, the exit strategy is inseparably linked to purpose. What is the purpose of this investigation? Or perhaps the better question to ask now is, what should be the purpose of this investigation? The chairman has stated he intends this exercise to inform the public. That is one of our purposes as an oversight and investigatory committee, so I support that fully and completely. I do not think it is enough that we view our purpose as informational only. We need to take the next step. We need to correct the problems with our campaign system. That is what the American public wants. I think that is what we want on both sides of the aisle. That is what both political parties have said they want. It means that to correct the problems, we are going to have to investigate then wherever those problems may be, not just on a narrowly defined limit of the last election. All the questions posed by my distinguished colleague in his remarks point to campaign finance practices that may be illegal or, if not, in my view ought to be illegal. I happen to think that the reform of campaign finance laws should be our daily objective in this Congress. However, I am convinced that the fight over passing real campaign finance reform will not be won until the pressure from the American people becomes overwhelming, and I think these hearings and this investigation can make that interest overwhelming. That is the reason I think we should go the next step. This investigation, if done right--and I am convinced it will be-- could be the vehicle to create that pressure. But it will not happen if this investigation somehow turns into partisan pointing and bickering back and forth, and I do not think it will happen if the inquiry drags on into next year, an election year, when changing the campaign finance laws will be virtually impossible. If we do not use this unique opportunity to reach real reform, the American people will have a tendency to say a pox on both our houses, and I think they will probably be right. So I say to Chairman Thompson and my Republican colleagues, let us not only inform but let us take that next step of enactment of campaign finance reform this year as our goal and as a major purpose of this investigation. Inform, certainly, but take the next step as well. Let us examine the most important and egregious set of political fundraising and spending practices--not just pointing at one spot but let us look at the practice. Let us write a report this year that tells the American people really how badly this system has been operating and how it should be fixed. And Heaven knows, we are experts on it because we deal with this system every day and every time we have to run for reelection. And then let us go out and fix it before the year is over. Is there misuse, for instance, of nonprofits and tax exempts? There is misuse of foreign funds; we know that. What are the major misuses of soft money? What are the misuses of Government itself? And wherever we need to go to get information that helps us correct those problems and others is where we should go. These, Mr. President, are my thoughts about purposes and scope and duration of this investigation. So I think we need to devote the next few weeks to an effort hopefully integrating Chairman Thompson's vision of this investigation with what I have suggested here today, that we go beyond just the informational role and try and make some suggestions to fix the system. Then we need to come back to the Senate--together perhaps--and present our plan for approval by the full body because the Senate will be very much involved with this whole effort. This inquiry presents us with an opportunity to accomplish something together. We have had people on both sides of the aisle this year in positions of leadership and regular membership talk about how we must work together this year. We have come off a couple of bruising years here in the Congress of the United States, so I view this inquiry as an opportunity, truly an opportunity as Democrats and Republicans that will be worthwhile and lasting for the American people. As I indicated earlier in my remarks, I wish to address the issue of principles in the conduct of this investigation. The Senator from Tennessee made some very constructive remarks in his presentation regarding the role of the minority and the relationship of majority to minority in the conduct of this investigation, and I thank him for that and I wish to elaborate on them just a little bit. First, to assure that the committee's investigation is fair, bipartisan, and legislatively productive, I think it is vital the Senate define the scope and procedures and duration of the investigation in the omnibus committee funding resolution. Now, a definition of scope and duration will enable the Senate in providing funds for the investigation to establish what it is authorizing, the subjects about which it wishes to learn from the committee, and when it wishes the committee to report. There should also be a specification of even-handed procedural ground rules for the investigation. For example, the majority and minority should have contemporaneous access to all documentary evidence received by the committee. The majority and minority should have the right to be present at and participate equally in all depositions and investigatory interviews. And the majority and minority should have equal opportunity to obtain and present relevant testimonial and documentary evidence on the subjects of the committee's inquiry. These are just safeguards for a fair and bipartisan inquiry which is in keeping with contemporary Senate practice. This is the way the last several Senate investigations have been done, and Senate practice from investigations of this kind dictate that it should be expressly spelled out before the actual investigating begins so we do not get into an unpleasant disagreement in the middle of the hearings. Also, the minority should have sufficient personnel and resources to enable it to take part fully in acquiring and analyzing evidence. That may be a problem because ordinarily the committee split on resources here in the Senate is one-third/two-thirds. I do not anticipate that is going to change in this investigation. But it means on the minority side, that to have an even prospect of having an even ability to look at areas we might want to explore, we are at a disadvantage going in. So it is obvious that many issues will have to be negotiated in order to reduce the risk that the Governmental Affairs investigation degenerates into a partisan finger pointing exercise. I certainly do not want to see that happen. All of us in the Senate, and in particular all of us on the committee, have a grave responsibility. That responsibility is to ensure that this investigation moves forward in a constructive and bipartisan manner. I look forward to mutual respect among all participants. Most of all, we need to enter into this with the interests of the American people uppermost in our minds, rather than any partisan political advantage. And that means looking in all directions, wherever we find any information that may direct us to what I see as the secondary objective of our hearings, and that is not only to inform but to recommend ways to correct these problems so we do not go on into the next election with some of the same abuses taking place all over the country that occurred in this last election. My distinguished chairman has said this is his aim. I certainly take him at his word. He is a man of his word. I know that. We want to work together on this. So I hope we can come quickly to an agreement on scope, on time, on process, on cost of the investigation, and place that agreement in the funding resolution for the Governmental Affairs Committee. This can be a most important activity we are about to embark on here. From all appearances it is going to be fairly long and arduous, and I think it is important we set these kinds of rules before we get going; not important just for us on a personal basis here, but it is important that somebody work this out for the American people. That is what this committee has the opportunity to do. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I have known Madeleine Albright for many years and consider her extraordinarily well qualified for the important post of Secretary of State. She has the knowledge, experience, intelligence, candor, energy, and strength of will necessary for this difficult job. I will support her confirmation with enthusiasm. By now most Americans have heard the compelling story of Madeleine Albright's family flight from first fascism, and then communism. After coming to the United States, Madeleine Albright compiled an impressive academic resume, including a B.A. from Wellesley College and a masters and doctorate from Columbia University. Her subsequent career has been devoted to international affairs and government--from Capitol Hill, to the National Security Council, to the challenging post of United States U.N. Ambassador. She served as a professor at the Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a scholar at both the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to her appointment to the U.N. post, Ambassador Albright was president of the Center for National Policy, a nonprofit research institution. By any measure, the job of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is a most demanding one and Ambassador Albright handled it with great skill, earning praise from across the political spectrum. During Ambassador Albright's tenure at the United Nations, I had the pleasure of working with her to promote the establishment of an inspector general within the U.N. system. Ambassador Albright worked long and hard--and eventually successfully--to build a consensus among the member states for this U.S. initiative. The cold war no longer provides the overarching architecture for U.S. foreign policy. And I doubt that any similarly comprehensive substitute will evolve in the near future. U.S. foreign policy now has several more or less equal priority objectives. Balancing these objectives one against the other and moving them all forward in today's complex international environment is a challenging task. I am confident that Ambassador Albright has not only the intellect to meet this challenge but also--and equally importantly--the ability to clearly articulate for the benefit of the American people the national interest involved in the foreign policy challenges we face and the choices we make. I am pleased that someone of Madeleine Albright's character and ability has been chosen, and has agreed, to serve this President and this Nation as our primary representative to the world. I congratulate her on her imminent confirmation and look forward to working with her in the future.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Reserving the right to object, I would like to have 25 minutes after the statements on Senator Cohen appear, if that is all right.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Human Research Subject Protection Act of 1997. I send the bill to the desk.

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, if I approached any Senator here and I said, ``You did not know it, but the last time they went to the doctor or went to the hospital, your wife or your husband or your daughter or your son became the subject of a medical experiment that they were not even told about. They were given medicine, they were given pills, they were given radiation, they were given something and were not even told about this, were not even informed about it, yet they are under some experimental research that might possibly do them harm--maybe some good will come out of it, but maybe it will do them harm also--but they do not know about it,'' people would laugh at that and say that is ridiculous. That cannot possibly happen in this country. Yet, that very situation is what this piece of legislation is supposed to address. I have been in public life and have served this country for many years. Frankly, I do not think too many things that I see surprise me anymore about our laws and about Government. Three years ago, though, I began to learn about a gap in our legal system that does truly concern me. In 1993 the Governmental Affairs Committee began to investigate the cold war radiation experiments. These experiments are one of the unfortunate legacies of the cold war, when our Government sponsored experiments involving radiation on our own citizens without their consent. They did not even know the experiments were being run on them. It was without their consent. One of the most infamous of these experiments took place in my own State of Ohio, when scores of patients at the University of Cincinnati were subjected to large doses of radiation during experimental treatments, without their consent, without their informed consent. During the course of this investigation, I began to ask the question, what protections are in place to prevent such abuses from happening again? What law prohibits experimenting on people without their informed consent? What I found, when I looked into it, is there is no law on the books requiring that informed consent be obtained. More important, I believe there is a need for such a law, as there continue to be cases where this basic right--I do view it as a basic right--is abused. As I started out, I would like to put this on a personal level for everyone of my colleagues. You just think about your own family, your own son, your own daughter, or grandchildren who might be, the next time they go to a doctor, the subject of some medical experiment that they are not even told about. I do not think there can be many things more un- American than that. With the introduction of this bill today I hope to begin the process of correcting some serious gaps in our legal system. I want to make clear right now I am not seeking to bring medical research to a screeching halt. Please do not anybody at NIH, or anybody doing research throughout this country, think we are trying to stop that. We are not. That is not my intent and not the intent of this bill. This country has the very finest health care system in the world, in part because of basic research. In fact, in large part because we have put more effort, more resources, more of our treasure into health research than any other nation in this world. In fact, I believe most people are not opposed to participating themselves in scientific research, if they are told about the pros and the cons. That is the goal of this legislation, to make sure that people have the appropriate information to make an informed choice about their medical treatment. Everyone listening today probably has heard of the Nuremberg Code. That is the list of 10 ethical research principles which were produced as part of the judgment against Nazi physicians who engaged in truly heinous medical experiments during World War II. The first principle of the Nuremberg Code states that the voluntary consent of the human subject of research is absolutely essential. Unfortunately, as we look back through our history since the late 1940's, it appears that researchers in America may not have taken all that Nuremberg lesson completely to heart. I ask my colleagues what the following names might have in common: thalidomide, Tuskegee, and Willowbrook? Well, the answer is that these are all sad examples of unethical research conducted in the United States, and in the United States well after the Nuremberg Code was issued, adopted and worldwide attention had been focused on some of the abuses of that time during World War II. Given this history, I find it astounding that even after Nuremberg, the thalidomide babies, Willowbrook, Tuskegee and the cold war radiation experiments, and who knows how many other cases, we still don't have a law on our books requiring that informed consent--those two words, ``informed consent''--be obtained prior to conducting research on human subjects. I have had research conducted on me because of my past activities before I came to the Senate in the space program and so on, but I knew what was being looked at, what was being tried. I knew the objectives of it, and I was willing to do that. I was happy to do it. But it was informed consent that I had personally, and I knew what I was getting into and glad to do it. I think most people feel the same way. If they know what they are getting into and they feel there is a good purpose to it, they are willing to do it. But to do research on people when they don't even know what the research or the medicines or the radiation is that is being tried on them, I think is unconscionable. What it comes down to is there are no criminal fines or penalties for violating the spirit or the letter of that Nuremberg Code that should be the basis of all of our informed consent in this country. In fact, our own Constitution says, ``The right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . shall not be violated.'' So there is no explicit statutory prohibition against improper research. I must add that just because there is no law on the books does not mean there are no protections for people from unethical medical or scientific research. These tragic incidents I have mentioned have resulted in changes in the way human research subjects are treated. I don't want to misrepresent this, because there is a very elaborate system of protections that have developed over the years. Unfortunately, though, this system does have some gaps and, if enacted, I believe this legislation will close those gaps. Let me briefly describe the system that is currently in place. Regulations governing the protection of human research subjects were issued by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1974 and may be found at part 46 of title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations. In 1991, 10 years after a recommendation of a congressionally chartered Presidential advisory board, 16 other agencies adopted a portion of this rule, a portion of the rule to apply to research that these agencies sponsored. And at that point, these regulations became known as the common rule. The common rule requires research institutions receiving Federal support and Federal agencies conducting research to establish committees, and these are known as--the shorthand version is IRB's-- Institutional Review Boards. Their job is to review research proposals for risk of harm to human subjects and to perform other duties to protect human research subjects. The common rule also stipulates requirements related to informed consent, how researchers must inform potential subjects of the risks to which they, as study participants, agree to be exposed. It should also be noted that HHS regulations contain additional protections not included in the common rule for research involving vulnerable populations; namely, pregnant women, fetuses, subjects of in vitro fertilization research, prisoners and children. No other Federal agency has adopted these additional protections. Several mechanisms have been developed by HHS and research institutions over the years to extend the common-rule protections to more people. For example, many, but not all, research institutions which receive some Federal support voluntarily apply common-rule guidelines to all research conducted at their institutions. Additionally, in order to receive approval for a drug or device from the Food and Drug Administration, a research institution or pharmaceutical company must comply with the requirements of the common rule as administered by the FDA. In addition to the Federal regulations, most professional medical societies and associations have adopted ethical codes of conduct regarding research. The first such ethical code, called the Helsinki Code, was adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964. So it has been on the books for a long time. Since that time, other prominent organizations, like the American Medical Association, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the American Federation of Clinical Research have also adopted such ethical codes. Most recently, in October 1995, the President exhibited, I believe, strong leadership and established the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, NBAC. This had been a long time coming. It had been suggested, but no one had ever gone ahead and done this, and the President exerted the leadership and established the NBAC. Quite simply, the scientific and ethical issues which the NBAC are supposed to evaluate represent some of the most important, some of the most complex and controversial questions of our time. NBAC's input will be critical to informed policymaking for both the legislative and executive branches. The two primary goals of NBAC are to, first, evaluate the current level of compliance of Federal agencies to the common rule, and, second, evaluate the common rule and advise both the executive and legislative branches on any changes that might be needed to it. I very strongly support the work of the NBAC but recently have become extremely concerned to hear that more than 15 months after its establishment, the NBAC is still operating with a volunteer staff. It was my understanding that a number of Federal agencies supported the creation of the NBAC and agreed to back up their support with resources and staff. Some NBAC members have stated in public meetings that they are frustrated with the progress the Commission is making and attribute the slow pace to the lack of resources. Additionally, the resource problem may be limiting the number of meetings of the Commission. Further, if this problem is not resolved in the near term, the Commission may have to stop meeting altogether. I sent a letter to the President's science adviser a few days ago, Dr. John Gibbons, to express my concerns about this. Dr. Gibbons was working to resolve this funding problem, which I view as an urgent priority. I am very glad to announce--as a matter of fact, it was just today-- that these groups in Government that are interested in this had a meeting under Dr. Gibbons' leadership, and the $1.6 million that was supposed to accrue from these different agencies to be used by the NBAC is now forthcoming. So the NBAC is now funded so they can do the job they were originally supposed to do. We are very glad to say that has happened just today, and I am glad it happened today, just when I am introducing this bill, because it looks as though we now truly are moving to support the NBAC that did not receive the kind of monetary support, the kind of funding that we thought it was going to have when it was first formed a year and a half ago. There are a number of existing mechanisms that do protect human research subjects today. In fact, in March of 1996, the GAO reported to me that the testing protection system has reduced the likelihood of serious abuses from occurring. However, the GAO also pointed out a number of weaknesses and gaps in the current system. There are at least four areas, four major gaps. First, not all agencies have adopted the common rule, including agencies that currently sponsor research involving human subjects. The Department of Labor and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are examples of agencies that sponsor such research but those agencies have not adopted the common rule, which I think they should have. Second, the common rule's research is voluntarily applied in many cases. Most institutions which receive Federal funds will voluntarily apply the common rule to all research conducted at their institution. However, not all research institutions adopt this policy. And in any case, if any improper research is discovered at these institutions, there are very few steps available to the Federal Government to do much about it. Third, a private institution or a researcher who conducts nonfederally funded research or is not seeking approval of a drug or device with the FDA does not have to apply the principles of the common rule to its research. In other words, there is a huge area of all the private medical research out there that is not under the common rule unless they just choose themselves to just voluntarily do it. Fourth, no Federal agency, other than HHS, has applied the additional protections described in 45 CFR 46 for vulnerable populations--pregnant women and their fetus, children, prisoners--to their own research. So the purpose of this legislation is to help close the gaps that exist within the current system for protecting research subjects. Well, is there really a problem out there? Is this just a paper loophole that I am trying to close? Unfortunately, Mr. President, there are ongoing problems with inappropriate, ethically suspect research on human subjects. It is difficult to know the extent of such problems because information is not collected in any formal manner on human research. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer in my home State of Ohio has recently reported in a whole series of articles, after much investigation of this issue. And I quote from them: What the government lacks in hard data about humans, it more than makes up for with volumes of statistics about laboratory animals. Wonder how many guinea pigs were used in U.S. research? The Agriculture Department knows: 333,379. How many hamsters in Ohio? 2,782. So we have all this data on animals and little on human beings. I would hasten to add that the guinea pigs the Plain-Dealer refers to are the four-legged kind too and not the guinea pigs that are humans being used for research. The reason we know so much about the use of animals in research is that we have laws governing the handling and treatment of them. For example, the Animal Welfare Act requires that certain minimum standards be maintained when using animals in research. Let me give you some recent examples which indicate why, notwithstanding the common rule and the other protections that are in place, I think additional protections are needed in statute. In 1994-95, in an effort to explore the rights and interests of people currently involved in radiation research conducted or sponsored by the Federal Government, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments conducted an in-depth review of 125 research projects funded by HHS, DOE, DOD, VA, and NASA. According to the ACHRE report: Our review suggests that there are significant deficiencies in some aspects of the current system for the protection of human subjects. The ACHRE found that documents provided to IRB's often did not contain enough information about topics that are central to the ethics of research involving human subjects. In some cases the committee found it was difficult to assess the scientific merit of a protocol based on the documentation provided. ACHRE's report states that some consent forms studied by the committee are--and I quote-- . . . flawed in morally significant respects, not merely because they are difficult to read but because they are uninformative or even misleading. The report states further: Our review also raises serious concerns about some research involving children and adults with questionable decision- making capacity. And the ACHRE concludes: All told, the documents of almost half the studies reviewed by the committee that involved greater than minimal risk [to the subject] raised serious or moderate concerns. That is a horrible indictment. As I mentioned earlier, from December 15 to 18, 1996, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer published a series of articles entitled ``Drug Trials: Do People Know the Truth About Experiments.'' And I want to give credit to the people that worked on that. Keith Epstein, has covered Capitol Hill here and has written much and done much investigative reporting working on this, as did Mr. Sloat, S-l-o-a-t, Bill Sloat. Those two fellows worked on this and did a great job in pointing out some of the problems that still exist. And we have talked to them about some of these things. The Plain-Dealer uncovered a number of disturbing cases, very disturbing cases as a matter of fact, where people were either unaware of the fact that they were involved in research or were not provided full information about potential side effects of research. The series raises very serious questions about the adequacy of our current system of protecting human research subjects. The Plain-Dealer found, for example, of ``4,154 FDA inspections of researchers testing new drugs on people [since 1977] . . . more than half the researchers were cited by FDA inspectors for failing to clearly disclose the experimental nature of their work.'' Another serious finding in this series is that researchers who receive the most severe penalty by the FDA, being designated ``Disqualified Investigators,'' have little fear of this fact being found out by their peers or patients. One of the articles discusses potentially serious problems in the way research conducted outside of the United States is incorporated into applications for drug approvals in the United States. The Plain-Dealer uncovered much evidence to suggest that the Federal Government continues to sponsor research where informed consent is not obtained. And this fact disturbed me greatly also. On November 14, 1996, the Wall Street Journal published an article that examined the practice at one pharmaceutical firm, Eli Lilly and Co. in using homeless alcoholics in their clinical trials. The article raises some disturbing questions about the quality of the phase I trials conducted by this one company. Also serious ethical questions are raised concerning the appropriateness of paying homeless alcoholics significant sums to be human guinea pigs. It is not clear from the article whether these tests were reviewed by any IRB. On December 27, 1996, the New York Times reported on a New York State appeals court ruling which found that the State's rules governing psychiatric experiments on children and the mentally ill were unconstitutional. The court found that the rules did not adequately protect people who, because of age or illness, cannot give informed consent to take part in drug tests or other experiments. The article mentions 10 to 15 of the 400 psychiatric experiments covered by the ruling as being ``privately financed'' and therefore outside the coverage of Federal rules. How would you like it if your father, mother, son or daughter, husband, wife was in one of those institutions and was having experiments conducted on them without your knowing about it or without them knowing about it? That is what we are up against. On August 15, 1994, the New York Times reported on ethical and legal questions regarding a company's efforts to promote a drug that can make some children grow taller than they otherwise would. The drug in question, Protropin, has been approved by FDA for use in children whose bodies do not make sufficient quantities of human growth hormone. However, once approved, doctors may prescribe it for other purposes at their discretion. In this case the company was apparently surveying schools for short children and then trying to funnel those children to doctors who would prescribe the drug whether or not the children lacked the human growth hormone. This unapproved research was occurring without the oversight of an IRB. And at least 15,000 children have taken this drug. Another illustration of the precarious coverage of the common rule occurred in 1995 when it became known that researchers from the Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California Irvine, were fertilizing humans and implanting theses in different mothers without the consent of the donor. This research was not being funded by any Federal agency; however, NIH was funding more than $20 million worth of other research at the university. Even though several internal and external investigations by the university and the district attorney were being conducted on this experiment, a clarifying moment occurred when investigators from OPRR visited UC Irvine early last year. These investigators reminded university officials of the common rule; the fact that the university had agreed to apply it to all research conducted there--through OPRR's assurance process; and that NIH was currently funding a good deal of research at the institution. Within a week of OPRR's visit, the university took public action to halt the research and formally investigate the researchers. On October 10, 1994, the New York Times reported on a New York doctor who adopted two types of drugs approved by FDA for cancer treatment and stomach ulcers for an unapproved use to perform nonsurgical abortions. The article quotes the doctor saying that in 121 of 126 cases his approach was successful. The remaining five cases required surgery to complete the procedure. Because the drugs were FDA approved and the doctor was not funded or connected to federally sponsored research, no IRB or approved informed consent procedures were required. Apparently, each patient signed a three-page consent form, but this was not approved by an IRB. According to the Times, once FDA approves a drug, physicians are generally allowed to use it for off label purposes. Now Mr. President, some of the issues discussed in these articles are problems with how the common rule itself is being applied. Some of these examples illustrate the gaps in the common rule coverage. My legislation will address both the coverage and the application of the common rule. Now how precisely would the legislation work? It would require all research facilities to register with HHS. Registration shall include: First, statement of principles governing the research facility in its conduct of human subject research; second, designation of the official responsible for all human subject; third, designation of membership roster of IRB(s); and fourth, attestation that the research facility is complying with the protection requirements of the common rule. The legislation includes a grandfather provision for all research entities which currently have negotiated project assurances with HHS. The vast majority of research facilities have such assurances. The legislation contains a 3-year reregistration requirement. The legislation includes criminal penalties for failure to comply with the act. Therefore, if enacted it would be a felony offense to experiment on someone without their informed consent. The intent therefore of this legislation is twofold: First, to fill in the gaps of coverage of the common rule by requiring all research involving human subjects to abide by the rule; and second, to elevate the importance of conducting research ethically, the bill provides criminal fines and penalties for failure to comply with the requirements of this law, and by extension 45 CFR 46. Finally Mr. President, my legislation would codify a recommendation which the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments made regarding the conduct of classified research involving human subjects. Specifically, the advisory committee recommended that informed consent of all human subjects of classified research be required, and that such requirement not be subject to waiver or exemption. Under current rule and executive order, it is possible to waive informed consent and IRB review for classified research. Title II of this legislation would prohibit the waiver of either informed consent or IRB review for classified research. The advisory committee also recommended that human subjects of classified research be provided with certain information regarding that research. My legislation would require that such subjects be information concerning: First, the identify of the sponsoring Federal agency; second, a statement that the research involves classified information; and third, an unclassified description of the purpose of the research. Mr. President I have tried today to briefly lay out the case for the need for the legislation I am introducing. I know that my colleague from Ohio, Senator DeWine, is also concerned about the issues I have raised today, and about those that appeared last month in the Plain Dealer. I believe that he has requested that the chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee hold hearings on this subject. I think that is entirely appropriate. And I hope that this legislation could be considered in that process. I look forward to working with the Labor Committee in this regard. I do not claim to have the magic bullet solution with this bill. However, I believe there are some key principles which should guide the Senate's consideration of this legislation. These principles are: First, informed consent and independent review of experiments involving human subjects must be required. Second, anyone who violates the right of research subject to have informed consent, should be held criminally responsible for that violation. I want to put this in personal terms once again. You can imagine your spouse, husband, wife, father, mother, children, being experimented on without your knowledge or their knowledge. That is unconscionable, and we should not permit that. This legislation will close many of the loopholes that permit that to happen now. As the legislative process moves ahead, it is certain that the bill will undergo scrutiny and amendments. But I think the outcome, if this legislation is enacted into law, will be improved protections for all Americans. Madam President, obviously, I welcome any cosponsors on this legislation. I will be sending out a ``dear colleague'' letter to all the offices, and I hope we get a good response to that. I think there are very few Senators who will not back this when they hear what can happen then to them, their families, and their constituents back home, if we do not pass something like this. I think this is many years overdue. I don't want to scare people to death with this, because I think most of the research in this country is conducted in a way that is good and is with informed consent--in most cases. But just the few examples that I have mentioned here today, as well as the articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and New York Times I quoted from, indicate there is still a very major problem in this area and one that we want to close the gaps on so that no American is subjected to experiments like this, unless they know exactly what is going on and have given informed consent. Thank you. I yield the floor.